Personality is born out of pain. It is the fire shut up in the flint. - Letters to His Son, read more

Personality is born out of pain. It is the fire shut up in the flint. - Letters to His Son, W. B. Yeats and Others.

Nature does not loathe virtue: it is unaware of its existence. - A Letter to Myself.

Nature does not loathe virtue: it is unaware of its existence. - A Letter to Myself.

The glory that goes with wealth is fleeting and fragile; virtue is a possession glorious and eternal.

The glory that goes with wealth is fleeting and fragile; virtue is a possession glorious and eternal.

After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color, read more

After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn’t it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it? This is how I answer when I am asked—as I am surprisingly often—why I bother to get up in the mornings.

It's in the reaction of others that perfection is found in the flawed.

It's in the reaction of others that perfection is found in the flawed.

Within yourself deliverance must be searched for, because each man makes his own prison.

Within yourself deliverance must be searched for, because each man makes his own prison.

The observation of others is coloured by our inability to observe ourselves impartially. We can never be impartial about anything read more

The observation of others is coloured by our inability to observe ourselves impartially. We can never be impartial about anything until we can be impartial about our own organism. - Essays and Aphorisms.

The progress of freedom depends more upon the maintenance of peace, the spread of commerce, and the diffusion of education, read more

The progress of freedom depends more upon the maintenance of peace, the spread of commerce, and the diffusion of education, than upon the labors of cabinets and foreign offices.

The seeing of objects involves many sources of information beyond those meeting the eye when we look at an object. read more

The seeing of objects involves many sources of information beyond those meeting the eye when we look at an object. It generally involves knowledge of the object derived from previous experience, and this experience is not limited to vision but may include the other senses: touch, taste, smell, hearing, and perhaps also temperature or pain.